Mind Games
by Plagiarize
Summary: Werewolves, Dementors, polyjuice potion and the giant squid... and in the middle of it all, Severus Snape struggling to deal with a stubborn Squib who's invented a weapon that could win the war...
1. Starting Positions

-1Raven Wolfe-Smith was eighteen years old, and a failure.

In Charms, the only way she could make a teacup dance was by poking it with her wand. She had smuggled the hedgehog she was supposed to be Transfiguring out of class and kept it in a box under her bed, until Filch found it a week later. She had tried Divination, but all she had gotten out of it was a headache from the incense fumes. None of this really bothered her. Raven thought wand-waving and incantation-chanting was stupid. Just because something was in _Latin _didn't make it _magic_.

In appearance, she was very much a Slytherin - dark hair, pale skin, dark and suspicious eyes. She had a fairly slight figure, and people didn't pay much attention to her. That was fine with her, because Raven for the most part thought that other people were idiots.

She was currently walking down one of the spiral staircases on her way to the Entrance Hall. Breakfast wasn't for a while yet, but Raven didn't want to be around when the other girls in her dormitory woke up. The unspoken agreement between all of them was that Raven stayed out of their way, and they ignored her. Hiding a yawn behind her hand, she reached for the handrail, and stopped.

"Come on, Longbottom," she heard Draco Maolfoy drawl, somewhere at the foot of the staircase. "Want a taste of what your parents had to go through?"

There was the sounds of a scuffle, a thud, and a yelp. Malfoy laughed.

Looking over the banister, Raven could see Crabbe and Goyle, holding between them a moon-faced boy Raven remembered having seen sitting at the Gryffindor table. He wasn't in good shape. Blood tricked from his nose and the corner of his mouth, he was breathing heavily, and he didn't seem to be able to stand. As Raven watched, he shuddered under the impact of another invisible blow. A small cut appeared on his scalp, and started to bleed.

Malfoy laughed, and stepped out from under the spiral staircase, directly below Raven. He leaned towards the boy.

"Bet you wish you had your friends here to protect you, don't you?" he said, with savage pleasure. "The Potter-brat, and his Mudblood friend…"

Raven wasn't sure what to do. On one hand, there was Neville Longbottom, a pathetic person who somehow reminded her of a baby rodent, all pink and squeaking and helpless. Maybe this confrontation with Malfoy would teach him not to go around with 'Victim' written all over his plump face. But on the other hand…

On the other hand, there was Draco Malfoy, a sneering, preening bully who would actually go out of his way to mock her. Just because she was a Squib. No - it was because she was a Pureblood, and a Squib, and the idea that hereditary and good breeding wasn't enough to ensure magical talent made Malfoy and a lot of the other Slytherins very uncomfortable.

Longbottom squirmed.

"Pr- Protego," he whimpered, flinching as Malfoy leaned closer. His eyes, blackened with bruises, followed the movement of the wand Malfoy was dangling in front of his nose.

"Want it, Longbottom?" he said gleefully. "I can't think what a Squib would do with _this_…"

He spun it around and tossed it into the air. Raven leaned out and caught it.

It took Malfoy a rather long time to clue into what had happened. He looked up.

"Leave him alone," said Raven, annoyed. "He's harmless."

Malfoy was surprised and angry, but he recovered enough to sneer. "We're only having a bit of fun." He laughed. "Come on. Join in. Slytherins stick together, remember?"

"True," said Raven. "Hey, kid…"

He looked up at her, panting with fear and pain.

"Catch."

"_No_!" Malfoy yelled. He dove forwards as Raven tossed the wand, but Longbottom's fingers closed over it first. A determined look appeared on his chubby face.

"What do you think you're doing, you stupid-" Malfoy was interrupted by a Stunning spell he had to duck to avoid.

"Squibs have got to stick together, too," said Raven.

Crabbe swung a fist like a matured ham at Longbottom, and might've made contact if Raven hadn't jumped over the banister and landed on his shoulders. They both fell on the ground, and Raven had to duck and roll as Goyle came at her as well.

Malfoy was spitting out every curse he could think of, but Longbottom's shielding spells were holding up well. Crabbe, still lying on the floor, grabbed Raven, but she stepped on his face and he let go. He screamed, and she felt a twinge of self-satisfaction. Goyle tried to punch her, but she sidestepped and dug her fingernails into his arm. She twisted savagely, leaving deep red indentations in his fat skin and making him howl.

But Raven was in trouble. Busy ducking both Crabbe and Goyle, she had an idea that it was only a matter of time before -

Dodging Crabbe's grasping hands, she stepped right in the way of Goyle's fist and fell backwards, hard. The two thugs grabbed her by the arms, and pulled her upright.

"Incarcerous!' Malfoy yelled, and Longbottom's luck finally ran out. Thick ropes lashed themselves around him, pinning his arms to his sides. Malfoy muttered something under his breath, and Longbottom whimpered as the ropes tightened themselves a couple notches.

Snarling, he turned to Raven.

"You bloody traitor," he hissed, his face white with rage. Crabbe and Goyle stepped away from her, which couldn't be good.

"You… Mudblood," Malfoy continued.

"Both of my parents were wizards, actually," said Raven helpfully, edging quietly backwards.

Malfoy's lip curled in a sneer. "You're still a blood traitor." He raised his wand. "And you know what happens to traitors... _Cruciatus_!" he yelled, but a second voice spoke as well.

"_Protego_."

A shielding spell sprang up around Raven. It didn't stop her from trying to punch Malfoy in the face, whereupon she yelped as she was abruptly pulled into the air and suspended upside down by one ankle.

Severus Snape, his face white with rage, came striding out of the shadows, his wand pointing at Raven.

"_What is the meaning of this_?"

Snape was furious, but he couldn't help staring, at the girl in particular. He had _felt _the fear and hatred that had sprung into her mind the second she had seen Malfoy's wand pointed at her. And he hadn't even been trying.

Malfoy recovered first. "_Professor_," he said. "She _attacked _m-"

"What do you think you are doing?" Snape demanded. "Using an Unforgivable curse _on school grounds_?"

"It was self-defence-"

"I was watching you," he said, through gritted teeth. "It was _not _self-defence." Malfoy fell silent. "I suppose you would _like _a one-way ticket to Azkaban?"

The boy flushed a deep red at the reference to his father.

"Release Longbottom."

The ropes disappeared. Neville Longbottom looked up at Snape, trembling. Snape felt the fear radiating off his fat body, and was disgusted.

"Duelling in the school hallways," he muttered. "Cursing a fellow _Slytherin_…"

"_She _started it!" Malfoy yelled. "She took _his _side!"

"I know she did," said Snape, breathing heavily with suppressed anger. "All of you, go back to your common rooms and consider yourselves lucky you didn't come to the attention of any _other _teacher."

Longbottom looked like he was about to cry at the blatant unfairness of it all, but he hurried away, looking fearfully over his shoulder at Malfoy. Malfoy, his face still crimson, left more slowly.

Raven, however, was still dangling upside-down.

"Are you going to let me down?" she asked hopefully.

"I can see you don't have the common sense you were born with," he snapped. "Even you should know enough not to want Draco Malfoy as an enemy."

Raven stopped trying to free herself and dangled in midair. "I don't want Draco Malfoy as a friend, either," she said. "I want Neville Longbottom as a friend."

His lip curled. "That useless, cowardly lump?"

"He's good at Herbology, and he's stupidly loyal to anyone who's nice to him. Draco Malfoy, on the other hand…" She paused to blow her falling hair out of her face. "Him and his father, they don't _need _anyone. Not even you. I'm sure it was nice, having Malfoy Juniour as head of his class in Potions and a Prefect and everything, but I doubt that NEWTs are going to count for much once Lord Voldemort is back in power…"

In the many years that Raven Wolfe-Smith had been in his House, Snape had spoken to her only a handful of times. He resented hearing her telling him the truth now.

"_Do not_," he said, loudly, "say his name."

"Whose, Voldemort's? Whyever not? It's a stupid name, anyways. Voldemort. _Vol de mort_. Flight of the dead. It sounds like the title of a painting by that man, Goya…"

"DO NOT SAY THE DARK LORD'S NAME," Snape shouted. Raven shut up, and looked at him in surprise. "There is a war on," he continued, snarling.

"I know. I've been knitting socks," she said, seriously. She twisted around so she started to spin in a circle.

"What do you think you were doing, getting involved in other people's business?" Snape asked, his voice once again smooth. "It would have been more… appropriate… to let Longbottom and Malfoy solve their own differences."

Raven spun idly in a circle. "Will you let me down _now_?"

Snape watched her expressionlessly, his lank black hair falling like a curtain across his face. "No."

She kicked fruitlessly at the spell. "_Please_," she demanded. Snape could feel the frustration growing in her mind. He was deliberately goading her, and when she made eye contact with him, he gave her mind a tug and waited for her memories to unravel right into his lap.

What he wanted were her weaknesses. A recent embarrassment, some event to confront her with, to show her that she wasn't so superior after all.

What he _got _was pain, as his head suddenly pounded with blood, his abdominal muscles ached and his ankle hurt like hell. And he was dizzy.

He abruptly broke the spell. Raven fell four and a half feet to the floor and lay there rubbing her ankle. Snape stared at her.

"Thanks," she said, apparently unaware that he'd been inside her head. Staggering awkwardly to her feet, she hopped around in a circle, trying to restore circulation to her foot. "Nice work with the shielding spell, by the way."

"What is wrong with your arm?" he demanded, abruptly.

Raven looked at him. "Nothing."

She was lying. Snape had felt the deep, searing ache in her left arm, just below her shoulder. It had reminded him of something…

"If that's all, I'll be going," Raven was saying. "Good morning." she added.

Snape stared after her. To his growing frustration, he couldn't remember a single thing about her. All the years she had been in his Potion's class, she had been polite, obedient, a good student - and somehow invisible.

But the memory of the pain in her arm bothered him. Absently, he rubbed his left forearm, where the Dark Mark had been branded years before. It had been hurting more than ever, lately.


	2. Keep Your Hands

-1Looking out across the Great Hall at the breakfasting students, an anonymous crowd of chewing, chattering, cat-calling faces, Snape could hardly contain his disgust. They sat there, fat and happy, hardly seeming aware that the Dark Lord had come again.

He stabbed violently at a sausage. Of course, their tiny minds could be forgiven for having relaxed their guard, since very little had been heard or seen of the Dark Lord since the confrontation that had killed Albus Dumbedore. At the time, people had been stricken with fear and panic at the thought that one of their heroes was dead. But since then they had relaxed their guard, had grown complacent with the idea that Harry Potter, their new hero, was destined to triumph. They didn't know how powerful the Dark Lord could be…

Which reminded him.

Snape quickly scanned the Slytherin table and found the face he was looking for. Raven Wolfe-Smith was sitting alone at the corner of the table, as far away from Malfoy as possible. She was still eating, and looked as though she'd be a while. Snape got up and abruptly left the Hall.

He strode quickly down the hallways towards the Slytherin dormitories, alert to the presence of Peeves or Mrs Norris. Looking around and seeing no one, he said the password and entered the Common Room. It was empty: everyone was at breakfast. He disabled the charm on the stairway to the girls' dormitories, and opened the door to the room Raven shared with five other Slytherin girls.

It was a mess. There were robes and nightgowns strewn everywhere. Trunks had been left thrown open. Someone had dropped a perfume bottle, which had shattered and soaked the carpet with a smell of synthetic violets. Mascara, scented candles, framed photographs of different Slytherin boys and posters of rock groups decorated the tables, windowsills and walls around five of the beds.

The sixth one, the bed closest to the door, clearly belonged to Raven. The bed neatly made. Her pyjamas were folded and placed at the foot of the bed. The wall at the head of her bed was unadorned. Everything was dull, drab and impersonal.

Quickly, Snape searched the night table and found only some scattered articles of makeup. Under her pillow and mattress yielded nothing, as did the top of the canopy over her bed. He knelt down beside her trunk. A simple spell showed him that it wasn't booby-trapped. The lid was secured with a cheap combination lock. Snape hefted it in one hand, turning it this way and that. It was almost too easy for him to divine the combination. The lock sprang open, and Snape began going through the piles of neatly folded robes and leafing through the stacks of books, looking for anything that might indicate sympathy for the Dark Lord's cause.

And found it. Half-a-dozen old, leather-bound books, all of them very rare, and all of them describing ancient spells of dark magic. Two of them were in a language Snape recognized as coming from the Middle East, and one was a hand-written journal that had once belonged to a famous Dark wizard. Snape himself was surprised by the strong, immediate feeling of envy that came over him when he saw the books. He would have given anything to have the time to study them…

Disgusted by his own covetousness, Snape put them aside and immediately came across another curious thing. They were glass jam-jars, of various shapes and sizes, and inside each was a large, green-and-orange slug. He held up one of the jars to get a better look. The slug inside oozed along the walls of its prison, its sharp incisors scraping away at the glass. In total, he found seven flesh-eating slugs, each in its own jar. What Raven intended for them, Snape was unsure.

There was one other thing in the trunk, besides a few sets of robes. It was a cardboard box, with holes punched in its sides. Snape went to pick it up.

Something inside hissed.

Snape froze. He could hear voices, and footsteps, coming from the Common Room. He pointed his wand at the articles he had taken from the trunk.

"_Remedio_." The things gave a skip and a hop and neatly replaced themselves exactly as they had been before Snape had come. The lid shut with a bang and the lock sprang back into place.

They were walking up the stairs.

At the last minute, Snape stepped behind a fold in one of the bed canopies, and performed a simple concealing charm on himself. The door to the dormitory swung open and two Slytherin girls, practically identical in being blonde and wearing thick eye shadow, except that one was plump and the other was thin, walked in.

"Are you sure you didn't leave it in the Owlery?" one of them was saying, as the other frantically rummaged through the clothes and parchment scattered around her bed.

"Of course I'm sure! I wouldn't just drop something like that, what'd you think I am, stupid or something?" She gave a cry of frustration and stomped her foot. "It's _gone_!"

"Aww, what's Jared going to think when he finds out you _lost _his love letter?" her friend said mockingly, leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed over her chest.

"What if someone else find it?" the other one cried petulantly. "What if they _read _it? Oh God, I am so dead…"

The first girl looked speculatively towards Raven's bed. "Maybe _she _took it," she said contemptuously, indicating the bed with a jerk of her head. "She's always sulking around. She probably looks through our stuff all the _time _when we're not here."

"Ugh." The fat one curled her lip. "I hate her. She's so… _creepy_."

"She's such a loner."

"And a _loser_. I mean, imagine failing _first_-_year _Charms. Like, what is _wrong _with her? _Retarded _people could pass first-year Charms."

The thin girl made a noise of disgust. "Did you ask her?"

"About what?" the fat one said stupidly.

"About the stuff for the _party_, you idiot. You know, the _candy_?" she said, curling her fingers beside her face to indicate quotation marks.

"Oh. Yeah. She wants ten galleons for the whole bunch."

"That's, what, half a galleon each? Okay. I wonder where she gets the stuff, anyways?"

"Steals it, probably."

The fat girl gave a sudden exclamation, and bent to pick up something from the floor. "_There _it is!" She picked up a folded piece of parchment.

The thin one rolled her eyes. "Finally. Give it to me, let me read it…"

"I can't wait until Friday," her friend was saying, as they left. "Remember the last party, and Blaise was screaming his head off 'cause he'd eaten six lollipops and he thought blood was coming out of the walls…?"

When he was sure they were gone, Snape stepped out from his hiding place and dismissed the charm. The talk about candy and lollipops had given him an idea of what the slugs were for. Licking a flesh-eating slug caused minor hallucinations, and the slug's slime could be used to make a number of extremely potent recreational drugs. It seemed that Raven was picking up some extra money by supplying her fellow students with hallucinogens.

More importantly, Snape had also found out that Raven was a loner - that no one liked her - and that she had no close friends, not even among the Slytherins. Snape also hadn't been deaf to the contempt in the voices of the girls when they had talked about her. Raven got no respect.

That was important. Snape well knew how much the Dark Lord's promises of power would appeal to someone who had been looked down on all their life. For Raven, a Squib with a few, limited talents, it must be even worse. To be patronized and looked down on, sneered at and made fun of… and then offered the chance to make everyone who had ever shown you disrespect afraid of you… it was a heady thought.

Raven would bear closer watching in the future

Back in the Great Hall, the morning mail came in a confused whirlwind of feathers and talons and paper packages as the owls dropped off their deliveries. Raven picked up her copy of the Daily Prophet, brought to her by a ruffled-looking great grey owl.

As she unfolded it, a small slip of paper fell out and landed in her pumpkin juice. She quickly fished it out. The barely legible writing said: 'Across the lake at midnight'.

Raven looked down the table at Malfoy as she idly tore the missive up, poking the soggy pieces back into her pumpkin juice for good measure. She wondered if he knew about her appointment: it would explain why he hadn't been very unpleasant, yet.

Sighing, she stood up. Midnight was a long time away.

Exiting the Great Hall, Raven almost bumped into Snape, who'd been walking in the opposite direction with his head down, his attitude bespeaking deep concentration.

"Hello again," she said, and was surprised when he stepped back from her with a hiss. What was he so startled abou-

She looked down at his hands. A slow smile broke over her face.

Snape's fingers were smeared with thick, black, ink. He caught what she was looking at and tried to hide his hands inside his robes, but it was too late.

"You should be more careful about picking up things that don't belong to you," she said, mildly.

Snape's expression became even blacker.

"It was on the back of the lock," Raven added. "Don't worry: it'll wash off in a day or two."

She was still smiling as she walked away, leaving Snape standing in the middle of the hall. Wizards could be so delightfully _stupid _sometimes. The greatest wizards might have untold power at their fingertips, but they could still be stumped by something as prosaic as, for example, a thick layer of India ink reapplied twice daily with a camel-hair brush.

Humming tunelessly to herself, Raven went outside to sit in the sun.


	3. NightTime Blues

-1Raven went through her round of classes almost blindly, unconsciously following her usual routine, attending classes and doing some cursory studying for exams. She didn't know why she bothered, except that this was her last year at Hogwarts, and she was not going to give them an excuse to make her come back next September.

And then, slowly, the hands of the clocks ticked around their daily orbits, and it was midnight.

A gibbous moon hung in the sky like a lopsided piñata as Raven pushed the small rowboat out into the lake. She had hardly waded in up to her knees when a tentacle snaked around her leg, pulling her deeper.

With the reflection of the night sky spread like ink over the surface of the water, she couldn't see but she could imagine the enormous, human-like eyeball watching her from the deeper water. Raven smiled as another tentacle came out of the water and curled around her arm, and then yelped and swallowed a mouthful of water as the squid yanked her playfully into the water.

The boat momentarily forgotten, Raven came up, gasping for air, and a tentacle brushed her leg. Breathing deeply, she inhaled and dove, feeling blindly in the murky water. Just as her lungs began to burn, her fingers brushed against rubbery skin. Rocketing to the surface, she swam as fast as she could, but a tentacle slapped her arm.

It was hardly a fair game of tag. Raven couldn't swim for very long before her need for oxygen drove her gasping to the surface, and the squid had ten arms averaging fifty meters in length. Finally, exhausted and panting for breath, she sat in the shallows watching the squid slapping the surface of the water, occasionally reaching out and tapping her arm, trying to lure her back in. Raven smiled regretfully, and shook her head. The moon was already high overhead. She had to go.

Pushing the boat farther out, she climbed in and started rowing, the oars leaving patterns of expanding concentric circles in the water behind her. She had the impression that the squid was following her, far underneath the boat: but then she saw the dark, hooded figure standing on the opposite shore, and forgot all about it.

The Death Eater didn't lend her a hand as she stepped out of the boat into the rocky shallows, and heaved it part ways up onto the shore. Damp and shivering, Raven approached. The effort involved in rowing the bulky watercraft across the lake had been too much, and her left arm throbbed with a deep, hot pain that she struggled to hide.

The Death Eater stirred, and pointed a wand at Raven's chest.

"Are you prepared to serve the Dark Lord with all of your heart and soul?"

The voice was young and female, but with the shroud of night covering them, Raven couldn't discover anything else about her interviewer.

"Serve?" Raven demanded, unimpressed by the Death Eater's overly-theatrical attitude. "_Serving _wasn't what I was thinking. I'm here to sell something. Or not."

"You have a very high opinion of yourself," said the Death Eater, with a hint of a smile in her voice. It wasn't a nice smile. "We are _all _servants at the side of our leader, the greatest wizard who ever lived."

"The greatest _dark _wizard who ever lived, surely…"

"You'll learn the proper answers soon enough," the Death Eater snapped. "Dumbledore was a fool, pandering to the weak and the Mudbloods. Lord Voldemort is the greater wizard - after all, which of _them _is still alive?"

"Still…"

"Stop trying to be smart, you stupid little Squib." The smile had turned into a snarl. "You take too many liberties. Who do you think you are? Without our help - without joining us - you will be _nothing_."

Raven snarled back. "Then why are you bothering to ask me to join you? Because I have something you want, that's why. So try to curb your raving arrogance, or I'll take my business elsewhere."

The Death Eater sighed, impatiently. "Fine. What do you want, then?"

Leaning against a tree, Raven folded her arms across her chest. "I want to know more. What's going to happen once the Dark Lord has won?"

The question seemed to puzzle the Death Eater. "We will have _won_. Our purpose will have been served - the world will be purged of the Mudbloods and Muggles. Except those we allow to serve us," she added, as an afterthought.

"And then what? What sort of a world will the Dark Lord make?"

"A paradise."

Raven snorted, rather rudely. That answer told her absolutely nothing.

"We the neglected will occupy our proper places in the world," the Death Eater added. "We will come out of the shadows at last. And that is enough of that idle chatter. Where are the potions?"

"Hidden," said Raven. The Death Eater made a noise of disgust.

"What is the use of that?"

"It keeps _me _safer," Raven said. "Look, what's going to happen to me?"

"Is that all you wanted to know?" the Death Eater said, exasperated. "We told you before - part of the agreement is that you will come with us and use your talents for the Dark Lord. He has decided that he needs more witches and wizards who are talented at brewing potions, and that is the post you will take." She held out her hand. "Provided that the potions you have promised us do what you have said they will."

She continued to hold out her hand.

"I told you, I haven't got them with me," Raven hinted. "You aren't going to get them - not until I speak to the Dark Lord himself."

She turned to walk back to the boat.

"_Crucio._"

Pain blossomed, beginning from her back where she'd been hit and unfolding over her entire body. Raven stumbled and fell. She started to scream, but muffled the noise by biting her lip. Curled up in a foetal position, her body shivered and convulsed as the Death Eater approached her. She bent down, close to Raven's ear.

"You are hardly as indispensable as you seem to think you are," she hissed. "Personally, I believe what you have to offer is nothing but lies and misinformation, but my Lord seems to think otherwise."

A final spasm shook Raven's body, and she relaxed, panting. Her muscles twitched sporadically with the memory of the fire that had burned through them.

"Now, will you tell me where the potions are? Or shall we continue our little game until your heart bursts, and I leave your dead body floating in the lake? Would you like that?"

Raven mutely shook her head, and curled up even tighter with her arms covering her head, as if that would protect her. This time, she didn't even _try _not to scream.

The pain stopped unexpectedly. Raven looked up in time to see an enormous tentacle come whipping out of the lake and slam into the Death Eater, carrying her into the trunk of a nearby tree. There was a horrible _crunch_, and then the limp body was dragged back into the water. Raven caught a glimpse of a glazed eye, staring at her over the top of a mask, which had slipped down around the Death Eater's neck. Blood trickled down a pallid face illuminated by the moonlight, and then the body was gone. It all happened so fast: all Raven could do was stare.

She couldn't stop _shivering_.

Raven lay still for a moment longer, and then got up and moved closer to the trees ringing the shore and began to collect handfuls of small twigs and dead leaves. These she arranged in a pile in the center of a patch of cleared ground before taking off her shoe and fishing around inside for a match. Raven hated to be cold - it made her feel slow and stupid - and she always carried a match in her shoe, embedded in a bit of candle wax. She peeled it out and scraped off the wax. It sparked, then flared into life when she struck it against a stone. Carefully, she touched it to her pile of kindling and watched closely, adding or adjusting the sticks until they were burning nicely. The small fire radiated a tiny circle of warmth, and Raven huddled close to it.

Anger and humiliation twisted around and around inside her stomach. How could she have been so _stupid _as to think that one lot of wizards would be any different from another? Why had she imagined that her prospects would have been any better with the Dark Lord than with the others? Wizards were all the same everywhere, just as blind, prejudiced and _disrespectful_…

She stared dully into the flickering flames. The truth was, she had expected better treatment at Lord Voldemort's hands. But what she had been told was evidently true: he was confident he could win the war. If there had been even a hint of doubt, he would have come himself - would never have let his Death Eater treat her in such a manner. He must have decided he had no need of Raven's help, and just like that, her single playing card was rendered useless.

Her hand snuck up and absently touched her left arm, feeling under her sleeve for the puckered, raw edges of skin. The cut could sting like hell, sometimes. And it didn't seem to be healing properly. Raven hoped it wasn't infected - if it was, then she really would have to go see Mme Pomfrey…

The warmth of the fire felt very good. Raven felt her eyelids begin to grow heavy, sink low…

She'd be back at the castle in plenty of time in the morning. There was no need to hurry back. Her absence was sure to go unnoticed.

No one ever noticed her.


	4. Polyjuice Potion

Fierce exultation swept through Raven like a tide, bringing with it new hope, new faith and a brilliant new future.

School was over. Raven had finished her last O.W.L yesterday, jumping through all the hoops required by the Ministry (in those few subjects where she had scraped together enough marks to pass). This was the end. Tomorrow, the train would arrive and she would be taken back to Diagon Alley, back home, and she would never have to come back to this miserable school again.

Although… maybe there were some things she would miss. The giant squid, for one. And the Forbidden Forest. And making easy money by selling her idiot peers potions so they could melt the few brain cells they had. She would _really _miss that. But it couldn't be helped.

She was walking through the dugneons, and Snape's classroom door was open. She walked past it without thinking, and then stopped. Something didn't feel right. She retraced her footsteps, and stared hard at Snape.

Class had been dismissed not too long ago, and there were pieces of equipment still scattered over the countertops. Snape was seated at his desk, marking papers. He looked up when she entered the room, watching her with cold, dark and strangely dead eyes.

Raven paused. The tip of her tongue stuck out briefly between her lips, a habit she had when she was nervous. Something felt wrong about the situation, but she couldn't be sure what it was. For one thing, the situation smelled all wrong. For another, Snape was resting his elbows on his desk. He _never _did that.

Few people would think to act on such slim evidence, but Raven thought it was important. She had an unusually good sense of smell, and now it was telling her that there was something… _different _about Snape.

_He _didn't seem to think that anything was wrong. He looked at her for a moment longer, and then looked back down at the papers.

"What is it?"

Raven began to look around the classroom. The drawers on the other side of the room, she knew, held knives for chopping up potions ingredients.

"I have a question, sir," she said, wandering in the direction of the drawers.

"Well? What is it?" he snapped, when she didn't say anything.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Behind her back, she had pulled the drawer open and was feeling cautiously about for the biggest blade.

"I hardly see that it matters. And come over here! Stop wandering around the room like that…"

Raven obediently came over and stood in front of his desk. Her hand was closed firmly around the handle of a large carving knife.

"I was wondering, sir, who the hell are you?"

Snape looked up sharply, eyes blazing. Seeing the knife in her hand, he pulled out his wand, but Raven grabbed his wrist and slammed it down, hard, on the edge of the desk. The wand fell from his numbed fingers and went skittering across the floor.

"I asked you a question," she said. "Who are you?"

The man gurgled, hunched uncomfortably over the desk. Raven still held his hand pinned down, and she had brought the knife up to rest against his throat. She relaxed her grip a bit, and he gulped, panting heavily.

"Are you Raven Wolf-Smith?" he demanded, urgently.

Raven adjusted her grip so that the knife point was resting against his Adam's apple.

"What's it to you?"

"I'm here to talk to you, you impertinent girl! Put the knife down!"

"I don't think I will. What do you want."

The man growled. "What do you think I want? The Dark Lord wants the potions, and he wants them _now_." He paused, then added "And we would appreciate knowing the whereabouts of the _first _Death Eater who was sent to make contact with you…"

Raven kept her mouth shut, and shook her head. "Nuh uh."

"You are being childish and unreasonable!" he hissed. "Cooperate with us, or else-"

"Or else I pin you to the blackboard?" Raven suggested. Idly, she wondered how hard she would have to press to break the skin. The man squawked as she prodded at his throat with the knife tip.

"_Stop that_!" he hissed, his one free hand scrabbling at the desk. "When I tell the Dark Lord about this-"

"What? Tell him that an eighteen year-old Squib got the jump on you using a _penknife_? He'd laugh himself sick." Raven jerked down on his arm, forcing him lower over the desk. "Where's Snape?"

"Aackkk! Away!" the Death Eater choked out. "We sent him word of a meeting of the Dark Lord's supporters, at the Hog's Head."

"What, so he left without telling anybody?"

"Ever since Dumbledore died, he's practically cut himself off from the Order," the pseudo-Snape gasped. "He doesn't trust them. He left a note for McGongall, but we destroyed it…"

"Idiot," Raven muttered. She tightened her grip on the Death Eater. "And what's going to happen to him once he's at the Hog's Head?"

"Nothing! Nothing at all! His death does not figure into our plans! There is a meeting at the Hog's Head, but it's a set-up, a fake, we need him to carry the information to the Order! Now _let me go_!"

Raven scratched her jaw, considering what sort of damage he might be able to cause. Not much, she decided, so long as he didn't have his wand. She let him go, but fetched the offending article and pocketed it herself.

The Death Eater straightened up and smoothed his ruffled clothing, glaring at Raven. Then he gave a short laugh.

"Well. You're not lacking in nerve," he said. "The Dark Lord _will _be pleased to have you…"

"Hm." Raven looked idly at him down the shaft of the knife. "Will he really?"

"Of course. He _rewards _talent, unlike these miserable ingrates." His eyes flashed as he recognized her weakness and changed tactics, like a shark who scents blood in the water. "And that's what you want, isn't it? To be recognized for your achievements and your talents… recognition that _they _will never give you, because you lack the only abilities they admire."

"Work is its own reward," Raven said, but she didn't sound convinced. The Death Eater laughed.

"Admit it," he said, amused. "You want to rub their faces in the fact that you could've helped them to victory, but for the fact that they were too blind to see it. Isn't that how you feel?" He laughed softly. "Poor child," he said, almost affectionately. "Come…"

He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. Raven whipped around, dodging back out of the way and bringing the knife back up to point at his throat.

"_Don't_," she warned, "do that."

The Death Eater's face twitched, all fellow-feeling gone. He dropped his outstretched hand.

"Nervous, aren't you?" he said. "Jumpy as a feral dog. I should have known, considering your father…"

"Oh, shut up," Raven said, wearily. "I told the other Death Eater, I'm not dealing with any pawns. What I've got is powerful enough that I want to speak to Lord Voldemort himself before I hand it over."

"You-" the Death Eater began, and then he looked up with a sharp hiss. Raven turned around. Professor McGongall was standing in the doorway. She had her wand pointing at Raven.

The slow, prickling realization crept over Raven that she was still holding the knife, pointing at someone who to all intents and purposes, was Professor Severus Snape.

She quickly opened her hand. The knife clattered to the floor.

The Death Eater stepped forwards and took his wand from her pocket.

"Just in time, Headmistress," he murmured, slipping into character.

"What happened, Severus?" she demanded. She looked furious, but she had turned to Snape for answers. Clearly, she hadn't overheard much.

"I'm not sure… I stepped out of my office for a moment, and when I came back she was here, looking for something. Searching for information pertaining to the Order, I suppose. When she saw me, she grabbed the knife and attacked." The Death Eater was staring right at her, smiling, clearly enjoying himself. Raven snarled at him, hatred rushing up and filling the emotional void left behind by self-pity. So this is how he was going to let it play out…

"Professor McGongall, listen to me," she said, urgently. If he was going to throw her to the wolves, she might as well do the same to him. "That's _not Snape_."

"_Professor _Snape, Miss… Miss Smith," McGongall snapped. "Is she one of You-Know-Who's, then?"

"In all probability, yes," the pseudo-Snape was saying, while Raven yelled "_Listen_, why don't you? _That's not Professor Snape. He's_ the Death Eater, not me!"

"Miss Smith, you will kindly refrain from making such wild claims. The case against you is black enough as it is," McGongall chided her.

"Go easy on the child, perhaps she was acting under the Imperius curse…"

"_That's - not - Snape! That's - not - Snape!_" Raven yelled. "Do I have to tattoo it on my _forehead_?"

"…safest thing may be to hold her at Azkaban," not-Snape was saying. Neither of the adults was listening to her. "Until we can be sure, we can't leave her here…"

"THAT'S NOT SNAPE!" Raven screamed. Cornered and in danger, she lashed out. The Death Eater yelled as she grabbed his wand arm and twisted, hard, before kicking him in the shins. He fell. McGongall aimed her wand.

"_Incarcerous_!"

Raven struggled fruitlessly against the ropes that held her. The Death Eater got to his feet, panting.

"Good work," he gasped, glaring at her.

"I'll call the Ministry, they can send an Aurorer to pick her up," McGongall was saying, but quick footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.

Severus Snape walked into the room and stopped dead in his tracks, staring. McGongall and the Death Eater stared back.

"_Now _will you believe me?" said Raven, in a more normal tone of voice.

Frantic, the Death Eater grabbed her and jammed the tip of his wand into her neck. "Let us go, or I'll kill her," he snapped.

Raven jerked out of the way and bit down on his wrist. He screamed, and his spell misfired, shattering a row of jars on the far wall.

"_Stupefy_," said Snape, and the Death Eater fell face down, unconscious.

"S-Severus?" stammered McGongall. "I thought -"

"I know what you thought," he snapped. "I told you I would be absent this afternoon -"

"You never-"

"The Death Eater intercepted the note you left behind," Raven explained. Now that McGongall's attention was no longer on her, she was able to wriggle out of the tangle of ropes. She stood rubbing at her arms. Those ropes had _hurt_. "The meeting was a set-up, by the way," she added.

"I guessed that," Snape snapped. "What was he doing here?"

"How should I know?" Raven demanded, glibly. "D'you think he told me all his plans? Things like that only happen in books and movies. It helps advance the plot."

Snape glared at her. Raven relaxed. It was a very strange thing to be thinking, but he smelled right.

McGongall was staring at the Death Eater. "I suppose," she managed, "we should call the Aurorers…"

"Very well," Snape said coldly, still looking at Raven. "I shall want a word with you later, Smith."

Guessing that this was meant as a dismissal, she slipped out of the room. McGongall was still staring in amazement at the Death Eater when she left.


	5. Nothing But The Truth

Snape stalked outside. He ignored the cliques of gossiping students and walked towards the lake. The Death Eater had been locked in the dungeons, and they were waiting for the Polyjuice potion to wear off before questioning him. Just now, Snape wanted to talk with Raven.

He skirted the edge of the lake, keeping an eye out for her small, curiously evasive figure. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something moving in the shallow water. He moved closer. It looked like a piece of black cardboard, bobbing up and down in the waves. Snape stooped to pick it up, and stood holding the object in one hand. It was a black silk mask.

A sudden noise startled him, and he quickly stuffed the mask into his pocket. It proved to be nothing more than an angry duck, who was flapping and squawking at a water-weed encrusted shape emerging from the water. It shook off the seaweed draped over its shoulders and head, and Snape realized that it was Raven.

He walked quickly towards her, noticing the traces of webbing between her fingers and the thin tracings of gills along her neck. The last marks had disappeared by the time he reached her.

Looking up, she saw him and smiled, but in a distracted way. "Hallo," she said, and turned back to look at the lake. Snape looked as well, and noticed dark shapes, blurred by the waves on the water's surface, swimming into the deeper water. "Merpeople," she added, by way of explanation. "I just - wanted to go for a bit of a swim."

"I see." He looked her up and down. Raven was dressed only in a pair of shorts and a tank top, and she was shivering rather badly. Her lips were turning purple. Snape made a noise of disgust, and gestured with his wand. "_Nonwaeta_."

Raven stopped shivering. She looked down at her clothes, surprised. They were bone-dry.

"Thank you," she said, muttering "show off" under her breath. Snape pretended he hadn't heard. She waded up onto the grass, combing her hair out with her fingers.

"What happened to your arm?"

She looked around, startled. Snape stretched out a hand and ran his finger along the rough, red edges of the deep cut on her left arm, just below the shoulder. Raven flinched.

"Accident," she said, shortly. "I was out flying and got caught by a cross-wind. It spun the broom around, and I slammed into a tree and got caught up on a branch. Stabbed right through to the bone."

"I see," Snape said again. He regarded the inexpertly-stitched injury thoughtfully. "And I suppose you have an excellent excuse for lying to me before."

"Yes. Yes, I do." Raven scratched her head. "I lied because I didn't want to tell the truth. Next question?"

They had been walking towards the front entrance to the school. At the top of the stairs, a sort of stone terrace ran alongside the main building. There were benches there, along with some cement planters that at this time of the year were filled with flowers and ivy. Raven took a seat on one of the benches, and Snape stood looking down at her.

"You're a drug dealer," he said.

Raven stretched out in the sun, leaning back and propping herself up with her arms. "I wouldn't say a drug dealer," she said, thoughtfully. "That sounds too _cool_. I'm a business person. On par with those people who run those little corner stores that sell milk, adult magazines and strange ethnic foods."

"But you do sell drugs."

She snorted. "It's not like it was _my _idea," she said sulkily. "They _asked _me. I just do what people tell me to do, I'm not a bad person. It's supply and demand."

Snape looked doubtfully at her. She had turned around so she was lying on her back on the bench with her eyes closed. She'd manoeuvred her right arm so it was under her head, but her left arm was quite stiff, and she didn't seem able to move it that far.

"Anyways, it was a challenge. It's hard making potions like that, you've got to keep the temperature just right if you want to distil it properly…"

Snape turned to look out down the gently sloping lawn to the lake. To his left, he could see the dark, menacing shape of the Forbidden Forest; towards the right, he knew, was the train station where all the students would be collecting in two days time, to go home. Homes that were now no longer safe.

"And what are your plans for the future?" he asked.

"I don't know. Nothing special. Find a job, I suppose, although that can wait… Why'd you ask?"

Wordlessly, he pulled the damp mask out of his pocket and dropped it on her stomach. She opened her eyes, and sat up, turning the mask over in her hands. Snape still didn't look at her.

"What were you doing in the lake?"

She didn't say anything. And then she sighed.

"What do you know?" she asked.

It was Snape's turn to take refuge in silence.

"I met with a Death Eater," she said slowly, still holding the mask in both hands. "I was invited to join the Dark Lord."

"Did you?"

The terrace was bathed in soft, red light as the sun began to settle below the horizon. It was a popular place to be, and snatches of conversation drifted up, briefly audible, mingling with the calls of the crickets. Someone laughed, and the sound broke over the background hum of social intercourse.

"No."

"What happened to the Death Eater?"

"Dead. I found the body. Parts of it, anyways. It wasn't my fault," she added, hurriedly, catching the look on his face. "It was a freak accident."

"Why," Snape said slowly, almost to himself, "would the Dark Lord want _you _of all people? What could you possibly have that he wants…"

Watching from under hooded eyes, Snape caught the flash of movement as Raven's hands suddenly tightened around the mask.

"What do you think?" she said, tightly. "Haven't you noticed that he collects the dregs of this school? The outcasts, the loners, the losers… people without power, without respect, without friends, without anything worth losing." She continued to talk, hitting her stride without noticing that Snape's face had gone strangely blank. "He collects those people and he gives them power. And they are so _pathetically _grateful that all they do is wag their _stupid _tails when he changes his tone and kicks them! They _like _him, because he's the first one to give them a chance! Who knows, maybe he's the _only _one who'll ever give them a chance to get to the top."

She sighed and kicked out with her foot, sending a pebble skittering across the cobblestone floor. "Dumbledore was like that," she added. "_He _gave people a chance. Just like Voldemort. They both knew that, when you do that - sure, there's always a few jerks who'll snatch everything you give them, and snigger and laugh at you behind your back and not show you any respect, but for every one of those there's another person who'll die trying to repay that _one _instance of kindness, and that _one _moment of trust. They both took advantage of that. And now there's only the Dark Lord left."

She sighed again, coming down off her moral high horse. "But there's no way I'm falling for that trick. I'm my me, and I'll be damned if I fall for the Dark Lord's backhanded promises." She finally seemed to realize that Snape had gone almost rigid, and was staring intently into the middle distance. "Are you all right?"

Snape wrenched himself away from whatever inner struggle was occupying his attention with an effort. "I want to see you here tomorrow morning," he snapped. "If you are going to be approached by the Dark Lord, you are going to need defences." He stared wildly at her, daring her to say anything, anything at all. She didn't.

"Tomorrow morning," he repeated.

Raven nodded obediently. "Okay."

He stared at her for a moment longer, and then turned and swept back into the castle.


	6. Extracurricular Classes

The wand went spinning from her hand, and Raven was knocked off her feet.

"Sloppy," Snape intoned. "Try again."

Raven scrambled after the wand, hating Snape with all of her aching bones. She had met him outside the next morning, expecting to be grilled, interrogated or _something_. But instead, he had presented her with - her wand.

"I found this propping up a tomato plant in Hagrid's garden," he said, smiling in a not-very-nice way. "No doubt you… _forgot _it there."

She had taken the wand from him with bad grace. She'd hoped she'd gotten rid of it.

But there was worse to come, as Snape ran her through every attacking and defence spell in the book. Again. And again. And again. Each time, he disarmed her - each time, she had to fetch her wand and try again.

Resentment smouldered inside of her. She wasn't proud of not being able to do magic. It was embarrassing. And here she was, repeatedly yelling nonsense words and waving a stick in the air before being blasted backwards by Snape.

She stood up and braced herself.

"Expelliarmus, the disarming spell. Again."

Raven sighed, waving her wand in the required pattern. "Expelliarmus!"

Nothing spectacularly failed to happen. Snap stretched his lips in a thin smile. He barely twitched his wand, and Raven's wand went flying. This time, though, she didn't bother retrieving it.

"Forget this," she said, angrily. "I give up. I can't do it."

Snape levitated her wand so it floated into her hand. She threw it away.

"No."

"_You will learn_," said Snape. "You _must _learn."

"Why! So you can keep on humiliating me like this? I don't _do _magic. Besides, what do you expect me to be able to learn in a day that I haven't been able to learn in eight _years_?"

"There is absolutely no good reason why you have been unable to do magic," Snape said. "You are reasonably bright-"

"Thank you," she muttered.

"-and you come from not one but two pureblooded wizarding families. There is no-"

"Oh, so that's what this is about? Just because I have a pedigree longer than your arm, you think that makes me a witch?" She turned away, disgusted. "I don't do magic. I've never needed it."

"That _happy _state of affairs won't be allowed to last for long," he snapped, striding up to her. "You are a target, you stupid girl. You've defied the Dark Lord _twice _now. You will be _attacked _by magic, and you must learn to _defend _yourself with magic."

"Why can't I just keep on doing what I've always been doing? I've gotten along all right! Why do I have to keep trying to do something _I can't do_?"

"BECAUSE I WON'T ALWAYS BE THERE TO SAVE YOU!"

Raven gaped, astonished by the sheer audacity of the man.

"_What_?" she managed. "What, you think I've been _relying _on you to pull me out of all the messes I've gotten myself into?"

Snape didn't say anything, but there was a flicker of panic behind his eyes. Clearly, he hadn't meant to say that.

"Three days ago, I had never asked you for anything in my life!" Raven yelled. "And now you think I'm _expecting _you to waltz in and _save me_?"

That must be why he'd taken it into his head to try this tutoring thing, he wanted to impress on her how weak and defenceless she was...

"That isn't what I meant at all," said Snape, his voice sounding slightly strangled. "If you would just be _reasonable_-"

"Oh, _reasonable_. Now he wants me to be _reasonable_!" Raven proclaimed, to the world at large. "He only goes and insults me, and now he wants me to be reasonable! Let me tell you, I don't need your stupid… wand-waving and, and nonsense words! I've got a weapons-" She stopped short, backtracking furiously to avoid making a verbal somersault. "I… I just don't do magic," she finished, aware of how lame it sounded.

The look of superiority was sneaking back onto Snape's face.

"A weapon," he said.

"Oh, give up," Raven snapped, working on the basis that the best defence was offensive. "Forget it. Like I said, _I don't - do - magic_. So just… leave me alone, okay? Put this… hero-complex or whatever it is away and stay out of me life."

It worked. Snape had gone quite pale, and looked livid. "_Hero-complex_!" he spat.

"Whatever you want to call it. I'm out of here." Raven turned pointedly away and stalked back to the castle. She could feel Snape's eyes boring into the back of her head, and she ducked behind a large statue of one of the Hogwarts Four at the first opportunity.

Jerk.

Didn't he have anything better to do than bother her? It was just like a wizard, to assume that she was some sort of helpless infant just because she couldn't do magic. Well. They could all go stuff themselves.

Raven slowed down to a more sedate pace. The anger that had given her momentum had worn off. She found it hard to stay angry for long. Besides, tomorrow she'd be home again, and she would never have to think about magic ever again.

A small doubt nagged at her mind, reminding her that what Snape had said was largely correct, and that the Dark Lord wouldn't take kindly to losing two Death Eaters in as many days. But it was a very small doubt, and she found that it was very easy to ignore.


	7. Ask Me No Questions

Snape was still on fire when McGongall called him down to the dungeons later that night. The sheer… _impertinence _of that silly little _chit _of a girl! He had been trying to help her. It wasn't his fault her stupid, stubborn pride wouldn't let her accept it.

He found the Headmistress standing outside of the empty room where they had imprisoned the Death Eater who had been impersonating him. Her lips were compressed in a thin line of badly suppressed fury, and her arms were folded defensively across her chest.

"This man is behaving most impertinently," she spat, before Snape could say anything. "I want you to question him. Find out why he was here."

Snape wondered what their prisoner could have said to make McGongall that angry. He nodded briefly.

"Very well."

Inside the room, the captive, Silas Payne, seemed unconcerned, and even amused. He was sprawled in a sitting position, his legs stretched out in front of him and his hands shoved into his pockets. He looked rather more dishevelled than when Snape had last seen him. Snape walked in and shut the door. Silas looked up, smiling.

The two of them regarded each other.

"The Headmistress is furious with you," Snape said, breaking the silence. "What on earth did you say to her?"

Payne grinned. "I really don't understand it," he said, with feigned carelessness. "I simply commiserated with her over the recent death of her boyfriend."

Snape raised one eyebrow. "Boyfriend?"

"Albus Dumbledore."

Ah. That would do it, yes.

Payne yawned widely and deliberately, not bothering to cover his mouth with his hand. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

Looking the Death Eater up and down, Snape didn't say anything. Silas Payne was a young wizard, young enough that he wouldn't know much about the first war. He was insolent, arrogant, with a sneering mouth and hooded eyes. If Snape were to use the Order's usual tactics of persuasion and persistant questioning, Payne would never tell him anything. In fact, he would probably enjoy the chance to defy Snape's attempts at interrogation. It would give him a chance to show off, and Snape got the impression that showing off was what Payne very much wanted to do.

Snape tried to push the uncomfortable truth out of his mind, which was that Payne reminded him of a much younger version of himself. It refused to budge, and somehow, made him angry and irritated. He looked again at Payne. Well. He could show off as well as anybody...

"You have not been in the Dark Lord's service very long."

"Three years," Payne said.

Snape nodded. "Let me show you something." He gestured at the floor with his wand, and said "_Auvant_."

A twisted, glowing rune appeared, scrawled fluidly across the stone. Payne tried not to look curious, but he still leaned forwards a little from where he was sitting.

"You know, as everyone does, that it is impossible to Apparate or Disapparate inside the Hogwarts grounds," Snape said. "That is a lie." He stepped back. "This rune distorts the perimeters of the spell long enough for you to leave."

Payne looked thoughtfully from the rune to Snape and back again.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked, slowly.

"In time, you'll learn that the Dark Lord has supporters everywhere," Snape said, trying to keep a straight face.

Payne still didn't move. "I heard that you betrayed him… and that he wants to kill you."

"This is the only way you will be able to escape," Snape said, ignoring him. "Will you trust me?"

Seconds ticked away. Snape was hard pressed to remain impassive when Payne finally stood up, and walked over to stand in the middle of the rune. He winked insolently at Snape.

"Thanks for this," he said, and yelled "_Disapparate_!"

There was a loud crack, and a scream that was abruptly cut off. Snape looked at the Death Eater, and then down at the glowing rune.

"Ah," he said. "You know, you shouldn't believe everything you're told."

Payne said nothing. His eyes rolled in terror as Snape walked with deliberate treads around his body.

"Now, isn't that interesting..."

The Death Eater had almost succeeded in Disapparating. He had gotten about half a foot away. But the result of Snape's spell had been to force him into Splinching himself, with the result that it looked as though he had been caught in the middle of exploding. Various sized chunks of his body floated in midair, with as much as six inches of air between them. Snape passed an experimental hand between Payne's heart and a piece of his liver, and then stepped back to get a better view of the results. He smiled.

"A very old Death Eater trick," he told him. "I'm sure you would have learned it, sooner or later."

The door banged open. Snape whirled around, and came face-to-face with McGongall.

"I heard screams," she began, and then saw Payne. "_Severus_!"

"Hm?"

"Severus, what have you _done_? Put that man back together _immediately_."

Snape walked around until he was facing the discombobulated Payne. "I don't know," he said, deliberately. "There are possibilities here: a hungry wyvern, a pack of feral dogs…"

Payne whimpered, or would have, if his larynx had been anywhere in the region of his oesophagus. Snape was interested to notice that his heart began to beat faster, throbbing in the empty air. Something about it reminded him of a fish hanging off a hook, wriggling in midair.

"Stop it this instant!" McGongall cried.

Snape sighed, but made a cursory gesture with his wand. In an instant, the various parts of Payne had sprung back together and he collapsed, gasping, on the floor.

"Now will you tell us what you were doing here?" Snape asked.

Payne screamed. "It wasn't the Potter boy!" He threw his arm up to protect his face. There were thin lines of blood on his skin, marking the places where his body had fused together. "It had nothing to do with him, we're supposed to wait, it was the other one, the girl -"

"What about her?" Snape demanded, suddenly feeling cold.

"Wolf-Smith. Raven Wolf-Smith. I was sent to find out what happened to the other Death Eater, who spoke with her first… The Dark Lord wants her. She has them - the potions he wants."

McGongall looked sharply at Snape. "Who is this girl?"

"No one," Snape snapped. "A talentless nobody. What potions?"

"There are two… she compounded them, they're her own invention. The first… the first takes away a person's magical talent, turns a witch or wizard into a Squib… the second one, it -" He gulped. "It magnifies any spell cast by the one who drinks it. Increases their power many, many times over… that's what the Dark Lord wants, that's why I was sent here!"

Snape could hardly hear, hardly noticed as McGongall gestured him out of the small dungeon, was barely aware of walking down the cold stone corridor. _He had let her go._ He had known that Raven had met with the Death Eater, he should have known that something suspicious was going on, and he had _let - her - go_.

"Tell me the truth now, Severus," McGongall snapped, when they were standing together in the dungeon corridor. "You knew something of this. What?"

Anger twisted his stomach. Snape fought it back, and slowly, he began to smile. Alright. If that was how she wanted to play her little game, he _would _tell them the truth.

It would serve Raven right.


	8. Conference Call

"And you let her go?" McGongall demanded. "Without telling any of us? After she had admitted to sympathizing with… with You-Know-Who?" She didn't need to speak very loudly for her voice to carry over the small dining room in number 12 Grimmauld Place, where she, Snape and several other members of the Order were seated. McGongall had called an emergency meeting, and they had all been warned about what Silas Payne had said.

Snape's lip twitched in a snarl. Being made to justify his actions in front of this… this _tribunal _did nothing for his temper. "Had she _denied _having those sympathies, I would have thought that maybe she posed a threat. As it was -"

"What kind of a justification is that?" Kingsley Shacklebolt leaned back in his chair, running the fingers of one hand through his hair. "Frankly, Severus, you've always been too soft with the Slytherins. I mean, part of the reason you became Head of that house was so we'd have someone keeping an eye out for developing Death Eaters…"

"Do I look like a miracle worker?" Snape asked. "The students in Slytherin nearly all come from Death Eater backgrounds. Raven Wolf-Smith is no exception, and that is why, had she _denied _having an interest in becoming a Death Eater, I would have kept a closer eye on her. Most Slytherins would have lied through their teeth and the drop of a hat, but she told the truth, _knowing _it meant I would be watching her, and _knowing _that I would probably alert the Headmistress, and possibly the Ministry…"

"Which you didn't," McGongall pointed out, her mouth a thin line of disapproval.

"_Because there was no need_. She expected to be put under surveillance, therefore she had nothing to hide."

"Speaking of things to hide," said Lupin. "It's curious, don't you think, that no one should have suspected she had such a talent for potions?"

He was looking at McGongall when he spoke, but clearly, it was another swipe at Snape - Head of her House, and the Potions Master to boot.

"Had you ever seen the girl, you wouldn't be so surprised," he muttered. "She is a _nobody_."

Lupin leafed through the sheets of paper in front of him. They were Raven's student records. "I see she got high marks in Herbology, Care of Magical Creatures, History of Magic, Ancient Runes…"

"None of which require the least knowledge of spell-casting," Snape pointed out. "She has a certain keenness of intellect, but she is a Squib."

"That's a harsh assessment…"

"It's the truth."

Alistair Moody coughed, and leaned forwards. "What is the girl's history, anyways? Family background and so on. Whose side were her parents on?"

Snape leaned back, turning his wand over in his hands. "They were both Death Eaters. Her father died in the last war. I don't know what happened to her mother."

"You knew them?" Moody demanded.

"By _reputation _only. Silas Payne supplied me with most of the details."

"Well, that doesn't give us any more of a clue to her loyalties." Lupin was more thoughtful. "Do you really think that there is any truth to what Payne told us about the potions?"

"What do you mean?" asked Kingsley. "You think he was lying?"

"Maybe not, but perhaps Raven was. If she is as magically-untalented as these," he indicated her records, "seem to show she is, then the story about the potions might have been an attempt to gain some measure of safety. A way of making sure she'd be protected by Voldemort and his people."

"She's a Squib," Snape snapped, "not an idiot. The Dark Lord would kill her the second he discovered she had lied. No, it has to be true."

"But then, how did Voldemort find out about the potions?" Lupin asked.

"Easy," Moody grunted. "She told him."

"And then told Severus she had thought about becoming a Death Eater? It doesn't seem to add up. As Severus pointed out, she told him that knowing she had nothing to hide - but being in communication with Lord Voldemort is something, isn't it?"

"Unless -" Snape bit off the words, the truth having suddenly clicked into place. He had been an _idiot_. She had been using him as insurance. She had met the Death Eater, true, but something had gone wrong. The Death Eater had been killed, and then Silas Payne had been captured by the Order. So she told him about the meeting, about wanting to serve the Dark Lord, _in the expectation_ that he would be watching her. So that, when the Dark Lord came looking for potions, he would be there to save her. Again.

"Yes?" said Lupin. Snape became aware that they were watching him.

"Nothing," he managed, anger burning inside of him at having been played for a fool. A _hero_.

The others were talking about the potions. Snape dragged himself back to reality with an effort.

"… can't let You-Know-Who get his filthy hands on them," Moody was saying. "We've gotta find the girl."

"And then what?" asked Lupin. "What if she doesn't want to come with us?"

"We'll just have to convince her."

Snape opened his mouth to say something, and then shut it again. He rather liked the idea of Alistair Moody trying to convince Raven of something she didn't want to be convinced of.

"With a weapon like that, we could win this damn war without any more deaths," Moody growled. "Think about it - it's got to be more humane than shutting captured Death Eaters up in a place like Azkaban."

"We still don't even know if it works," Lupin protested.

"I thought we'd agreed the girl was telling the truth."

"All I'm saying is, don't get your hopes up. This could be nothing…"

He was interrupted by a sharp crack, and the lanky, red-haired figure of one of the Weasely twins Apparated at the foot of the table and fell into a chair. Arthur Weasely was on his feet in an instant.

"George!"

His son looked up wildly at him. His face was deathly pale, but he still struggled to smile.

"There's Death Eaters," he managed. "In Diagon Alley. Fred's with Harry and Ginny."

"George," his father said. "Your arm-"

The boy looked down at the sleeve of his robes, and actually managed a laugh. Where his arm should have been, there was a thick, slimy tentacle studded with suckers.

"It's just a hex Dad, I'll be fine."

"Right. Lupin, Moody and Snape, get going. Find the children and bring them back here," McGongall snapped, taking up the reins of authority. "I'll call together the rest of the Order and alert the Ministry."

George Weasely struggled to get to his feet.

"I'll come with you!"

His father pushed him back into the chair. "No, you're not, you're getting to a Healer. What would your mother say...?"

"But Da_ad_..."

They were still arguing when Snape and the others Disapparated.


End file.
